I had the good fortune to be in the village during the _Bon_ season. The idea is that the spirits which are visiting their old homes remain between the 11th and 14th of August. The 11th is called _mukae bon_ and the 14th _okuri bon_. (_Mukae_ means going to meet; _okuri_ to see off.) On the 11th the villagers burned a piece of flax plant in front of their houses. That night the priest said a special prayer in the temple and used the cymbals in addition to the ordinary gong and drum. The prayer seemed peculiarly sad. Before the shrines in their houses the villagers placed offerings. One was a horse made out of a cucumber, the legs being bits of flax twig and the tail and mane the hair-like substance from maize cobs. There were also offerings of real and artificial flowers and of grapes. In one house I visited I saw _geta_, _waraji_, kimonos, pumpkins, caramels and pencils. Strings of buck-wheat macaroni were laid over twigs of flax set in a vase. The _ihai_ (name-plates of the dead) seemed to be displayed more prominently than usual. (They are kept in a kind of small oratory called _ihaido_, and after a time several names are collected on a single plate.) _Mochi_ (rice-flour dumpling) is eaten at this time. On the 12th and 14th the priest called at each house for two or three minutes. I asked if the villagers really believed that their dead returned at the _Bon_ season. The answer was, "Only the old men and young children believe that the dead actually come, but the young men and young women, when they see the burning of the flax-plant and the other things that are done, think of the dead; they remember them solemnly at this time." And I think it was so. The stranger to a Japanese house, in which there is not only a Shinto shelf but a Buddhist shrine--where the name plates of the dead for several generations are treasured--cannot but feel that, when all allowances are made for the dulling influences of use and wont, the plan is a means of taking the minds of the household beyond the daily round. The fact that there is a certain familiarity with the things of the shrine and of the Shinto shelf, just as there is a certain freedom at the public shrines and in the temple, does not destroy the impression. When a man has taken me to his little graveyard I have been struck by the lack of that lugubriousness which Western people commonly associate with what is sacred. The Japanese conception of reverence is somewhat different from our own. As to sorrow, the idea is, as is well known, that it is the height of bad manners to trouble strangers with a display of what in many cases is largely a selfish grief. A manservant smiled when he told me of his only son's death. On my offering sympathy the tears ran down his face. [Illustration: FARMER'S WIFE]